1. Field
This telecommunication device, software module, or system relates generally to the field of telecommunication and more specifically to allowing better performance, functionality and business models for communication on modern public telecommunication transport networks, to allow both new services and the current services used on the Internet and on the Public Switch Telephone Network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The current global telephone network, the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), is built for voice communication of limited bandwidth (only 3.5 kHz). Broadband networks, e.g. the Internet, can also be used for real-time person-to-person communication, e.g. voice communication, often called VoIP (Voice over IP). The Internet transports data between endpoints, regardless of the data content or the application and is therefore called a transport network.
Although such technology has the potential of multimedia communication beyond the Plain Old Telephony Service (POTS), e.g. video, presence and instant messaging, VoIP has been used by telecom operators to replace pieces of the PSTN, still only offering POTS. Further, the telecom operators' VoIP networks primarily connect to each other for voice traffic, counting voice minutes for billing. Thus, those networks are not suitable for global multimedia communication.
Further, the potential of connecting traffic directly between users, over a global transport network, is not used in the current VoIP network, since the equipment for measuring usage so that the telecom operators can bill their customers is located centrally in service providers' VoIP networks.
For telecom operators to offer global multimedia communication, a global packet based telecommunication network with higher quality than the Internet—a quality WAN (Wide Area Network) is proposed. Such a WAN would be global transport network.
The proposed quality WAN consists of multiple telecom carriers having peered their packet based quality networks (typically IP networks). This is similar to the public Internet, but on the quality WAN, packets can be given different priorities (e.g. using IP level TOS or DSCP bits), while on the Internet all packets have the same priority.
The quality WAN may be connected to the public Internet via routers or gateways, but usage must be charged separately from the Internet to avoid that all traffic will be on the quality WAN with the highest priority level and to motivate telecom operators to deploy and offer such quality WAN.
Generally, at the border between a LAN (Local Area Network) and a WAN (e.g. the Internet), there is Firewall, often including a NAT (network address translation), for protecting the integrity of the LAN, but usually also hindering person-to-person communication using standardized real-time communication protocols like SIP (session initiation protocol).
Virtual Private Networks (VPN), in the form of private IP lines e.g. over MPLS, or encrypted tunnels over public networks, are sometimes mentioned as solutions to some of the above mentioned problems, but—in a best case—only moves the problem to be resolved more centrally in the network. In addition, VPN solutions are complex, costly and introduce problems and restrictions in themselves, by not utilizing the advantages provided by a global quality WAN. Furthermore, VPN solutions introduce security issues when the private LAN of the user is moved into the service provider's space, often resulting in customers wanting a firewall towards the VPN, again introducing the problems with real-time communication that the VPN solution was supposed to resolve.